Church - State relationship:Reading contemporaneity in New Testament Paradigms
Church - State relationship:Reading contemporaneity in New Testament Paradigms

Summary/Abstract: The present-day discussion on the relations between the Church and the State is determined, to a large extent, by the Biblical perspective on the Christian attitude towards the authorities. This is the reason why this study investigates the main directions of Christian theoretical thinking about the relation between Church and State according to the New Testament. The relevant texts on this topic can be classified in three categories, each of them presenting a specific paradigm of the Church-State relationship, explainable in the specific conditions of the Christian community within which each New Testament book was written: the ethic of subordination, the ethic of separation and the ethic of resistance. These three patterns were applied alternately throughout the history of the Church, according to the correlations recognized between a specific situation of Christian life and the New Testament paradigm. The final part of the study will offer some views about how we can apply the Biblical solutions to the present-day situation of the Church.

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